Where’s the Sierra snow?

The Northern Sierra is off to one of its driest winters ever, but state water managers who count on that snow are not overly alarmed just yet and have already sent word that rationing is not on the horizon.

That’s because the season is only a third of the way done and record-breaking storms of 2011 delivered more than enough water to stock reservoirs.

“Boy, this is certainly not the start of the water year we were hoping for,” said Bob Yamada, a resources manager for the San Diego County Water Authority. “From a water supply perspective, you don’t ever want to see dry years. But if they come, the best time to come is a year after a year like last year.”

That’s when the state went into the peak demand summer months with reservoirs brimming. Today, nearly every state reservoir is filled higher than the historic average. Last year, some Sierra elevations were covered in 6 feet of snow in early June, and the statewide average snowpack came in at 144 percent of normal.

The nagging question remains: Was last year just a temporary break in what had been a lengthy dry spell that had forced drastic conservation from Sacramento to San Diego?

Officially, the state will not take its first manual snow survey until Tuesday. But it’s clear from the granite scrabble landscape, even on the highest peaks, that the measurements will be in inches, not feet.

Electronic readings put the current snowpack at 24 percent of normal for this date, in contrast to the 202 percent reported last year at this time.

If the drought does return, that could further elevate the debate over the still-cloudy $11 billion water bond scheduled for the November ballot, not to mention work on complex, costly and controversial plans to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state’s water supply hub.

The outcome is critical for San Diego County businesses, households and farms that rely on Sierra snowmelt for at least a fifth of their water.

Immediately, the water authority is in pretty good shape, Yamada said. Storage is 19 percent higher than this time last year.

More significantly, the Metropolitan Water District, San Diego County’s leading supplier, is flush.

“It’s been drier than normal, but from a water supply standpoint we’re in better shape than we have ever been before,” said Debra Man, its assistant general manager. “We have the most storage reserves ever in the history of Metropolitan.”

Metropolitan entered this fall with about 2.4 million acre-feet in storage, a record amount. The most abundant reserve previously was 1.8 million acre-feet in 2008, Man said.

Metropolitan feverishly poured water into its network of holding tanks knowing years like 2011 are infrequent. Smaller reservoirs, such as Diamond Valley Lake operated by the Metropolitan Water District were also filled. In early 2011, It held supplies in Lake Mead, in groundwater programs in the Central Valley and in Diamond Valley lake near Temecula.

Diamond Valley lake was down to 400,000 acre feet, about half of its capacity, in spring 2011. A few months later it was filled.